A very nice conference at the Sorbonne University, Paris, with a day at the French National Museum of the Renaissance in the castle of Ecouens and another at the museum Musée Cognacq-Jay. The trio of the organisers managed to come up with a very enjoyable event. The idea stems from a research blog (Lit&res Les objets de la littérature baroque : littérature et culture matérielle dans les Iles britanniques et la France de la première modernité) and the focus was to deal with the concept of nomadic objects, from an interdisciplinary perspective. In other words, it was about making an update and give food for thoughts regarding issues with material culture. Historians of literature, art, science and technology and early modernist, as well as actors from patrimonial institutions wrestled for three days with the concept. Pretty well attended, this conference included great scholars coming from France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, UK and the US. Have a look at the program while their website is still up and you may regret not to have attended.

From a personal point of view, I enjoyed very much my talks with scholars outside of my fields about objects, especially armour, costume and weapon, while most of the paper were dealing with a period which is later than most my interests. I got to know new scholars involved in material culture, notably Marjorie Meiss, who just authored a monograph about the concept. Looking forward to read. My actual crush was about a blog post about the rapier on the research blog mentioned above, seen from the perspective of a literary historian. Refreshing read for arms and armour specialists. She'll get an invitation to publish in our journal Acta Periodica Duellatorum ;)